Spanish 350QH - Militancy/Sadism/Transvestism

The bloody dictatorships that took place during the 1970s and 1980s in the Southern Cone left behind a legacy of political violence, torture, sexual abuse, and disappearance of political dissidents. The Southern Cone states themselves became sadistic death machines like never before in these countries' histories. Bodies became territories of punishment and discipline as well as of struggle, resistance, and difference. We will analyze the way in which recent cultural production (film, novel, short stories, and theatre) of the Southern Cone and historical texts imagine and represent those "body struggles" through transvestite and queer bodies and dissident women's bodies, and by replacing the masculine icons of the left-wing militants and the state military terrorists of the 1970s.

Prereq: Two 200-level Spanish courses above SPAN-212.